Travel
The right trek
Carol Wright
The blossoming of trekking holidays is a sign of revolt against the ease of travel. Despite the boom in the trouble-free holiday deals, there are still those who are willing to forgo a few comforts to escape from the packaged superficiality of tourism, but would prefer the Trekking operator to do the worrying.
Cost and comfort are not always the factor; three weeks overland in North Africa could cost almost £100 after food and extras, say Minitrek. Though Siafu's ' landcruiser ' offers air-conditioning and aircraft seats, trekking is a more obvious holiday for the young and hardy. Hence the companies try to keep under the fortyyear-old maximum.
The Overland trip is the romantic alternative to the neat package of charter jet, uniformed dolly from Croydon and two weeks by an overcrowded hotel pool. On the treks there is the chance to see the natives, bargain in the ancient souks, buy oranges by the string or a jasmin garland from a doe-eyed boy offering his wares in half a dozen European languages.
Above all, the trekking holiday offers the chance to experience the local life before it too becomes submerged under the steam roller of Americanised materialism. To capture the flavour of a culture unchanged for a thousand years, to experience at first hand and with an exerpienced guide, what the Victorian traveller risked mind and body to find.
On the other hand, three weeks in a minibus with ten to fifteen assorted strangers takes a particular kind of kindred spirit. Though I am not the pioneering sort any more, the Lawrence of Arabia in every suburban Briton has called thousands to go trekking to the Sahara and Himalayas.
Even my husband is off to Morocco filled with images of desert warfare and the ancient city of Marrakesh. Perhaps trekking will revive those delightful personal travel books with superb titles like With the Memsahib through Somaliland.
So trekking is a welcome addition and antidote to the general travel scene. It attracts the young who have never had much physical challenge and excitement and the older people who want to recapture the adventure of youth before it is too late. Adventuretrek have a series of Land-Rover tours mostly with flights to connect. Moroccan tours continue through the winter and for those with time there's a 1973 nine-week European tour. In Morocco there is a tour which concentrates on the coast rather than the desert.
Stay-put trekking with an accent on camping, communal sports and sightseeing but with simple food and living conditions can be experienced at the Costa Dorada beach club with two weeks from around £37. Transtrek has a large winter programme of tours including a twentynine-day tour of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
Minitrek, one of the pioneers of this type of tourism, have divided their holidays between 'action holidays' of the budget camping style for the eighteento thirtyyear-olds, taking groups of ten to fifteen people in Land-Rover or minibus to places like Iceland for two weeks for £124; Lapland overland for one month for £83; or a month in Persia including air travel to Istanbul and back is £143.
For older people there is the connoisseur series of holidays intended to •be more serious geographical explorations. These include husky sledge crossings of the Greenland ice cap, and across the Vatnajokull glacier in Iceland by sno-cat. Hotter trails include four weeks in Afghanistan for £339, three weeks in Ethiopia for £80.
The longer distance exploration of remote areas has become a speciality of International Treks Organisation who list such trips as a five-month all-India tour for £300; and six weeks in Persia to the Valley of the Assassins for £5.
It seems logical that while Land-Rovers get you closer to unspoilt country than coaches, horses and mules are going to get you into even more remote countryside. The pony trekking holiday is better organised in Britain than abroad but, in southern Spain, Aventura holidays have a fifteen-day tour of the Sierra Nevada mountains on horseback for groups of eight using old mule trails through the cliffs and canyons of the area.
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